The Fighter Who Didn't Fight

I knew I wasn’t a writer

I was a fighter

I still am

Just

Injured

Torn hamstring

A bad tear

It had been 12 weeks

I had gotten Covid 4 days after the tear

I was in bed for 12 days

4 days of being sick

And 8 days of isolation

It wasn’t a bad case of Coivd

Worse than others

But

Just a fever

And a lot of sleep

Than

My dog died

I drank

A lot

And ate

A lot

And cried

A lot

I wrote as an outlet

Just like I did when she had broken me

The words poured out

Effortlessly

They weren’t good words

I was often drunk when I wrote them

I was often drunk in general

I was still working out the upper body

Or

At Least I was

Then

My gym caught on fire

Not my fighting gym

But my gym that I lifted and did cardio

The damn sauna man

I was getting out of shape

I could feel it

I could see it

My physique was changing

And it was changing fast

The damn hamstring wouldn’t heal

I started to read more

A lot more

Bukowski

Rand

Celine

Orwell

Huxley

Frankl

Solzhenitsyn

A few of the greats

I listened to lectures

Lectures on psychology

And

On philosophy

I liked existentialism

And

objectivism

It was all just to pass the time

The time without training

I wasn’t an intellect though

I just liked to learn about that stuff

I wasn’t a writer

Not yet

I was a fighter

I could still feel it

Feel it deep in my bones

I had spent a million hours perfecting my craft

The day I tore my hamstring

I had just gotten done doing an intense hour of kickboxing sparring

I felt great

Maybe the best I’d ever felt

I was seeing everything

Splipping

Countering

Bobbin

Weaving

Spinning

Kicking

Everything was landing

And I was hardly hit

My cardio was great

I always kept a great pace

Afterwards

One of my teammates complimented me

He said,

‘dude, watching you fight is like watching art’

Absolute music to my ears

That's exactly what it was

That's what I wanted others to see

My art

It was the roconization that I had longed for

The 10 years of work was paying off

30 minutes later

Doing jujitsu

The hamstring went

It was my own fault too

I swear I can still hear the pop

I can still feel it

Injuries were all apart of the game

God it feels like a lifetime ago now